Here too there is no hint of retreat into localism. There is instead a determination to co-opt and transform the decaying regime from within its own core. It may thus appear providential that liberalism, despite itself, has prepared a state capable of great tasks, as a legacy to bequeath to a new and doubtless very different future. The vast bureaucracy created by liberalism in pursuit of a mirage of depoliticized governance may, by the invisible hand of Providence, be turned to new ends, becoming the great instrument with which to restore a substantive politics of the good.

Vermeule is arguing that the Benedict Option, as well as Deneen’s prescription for embracing a post-liberal localism, is a mistake. He believes orthodox Christians should try to infiltrate the institutions of power, change them from within, and in that way change society. Jacobs says this is an attractive vision in many ways, but:

But I think Vermeule’s vision is missing one absolutely essential element. My question for him is: Where will these Josephs and Mordecais and Esthers and Daniels come from? People who are deeply grounded in and deeply committed to their faith tradition who are also capable of rising to high levels of influence in government and education don’t exactly grow on trees.

Jacobs says that the liberal order catechizes. It is not neutral. It teaches

So a key question arises: If you need people who are sufficiently skilled in negotiating the liberal order to work effectively within it, but also committed to its transformation, and who can sustain that difficult balance over decades, you have to figure out how to form such people. And it is just this that the churches of the West – all the churches of the West — have neglected to do, have neglected even to attempt. With the (in retrospect quite obvious) result: the accelerating collapse across the board of participation in church life.

What is required, in the face of a general culture that through its command of every communications medium catechizes so effectively, is the construction of a powerful counter-catechesis. Who will do that, and how will they do it? The likely answer, it seems to me, brings us back to the very localism that Deneen and Dreher advocate and that Vermeule rejects. Though I also might reject certain elements and emphases of the communities that Deneen and Dreher advocate, I don’t see a likely instrument other than highly dedicated, counter-cultural communities of faith for the Josephs and Mordecais and Esthers and Daniels to be formed. Those who do see other means of such rigorous formation need to step up and explain how their models work. Otherwise we will be looking in vain for the people capable of carrying out Vermeule’s beautiful vision.

Let me repeat Jacobs’ point: if you don’t think the Benedict Option will work, or is a good idea, I can certainly respect that. But you really do have to explain how we small-o orthodox Christians are going to manage a counter-catechesis to secular, materialist liberalism. As I said to audiences in Italy, a 2016 study found that only 22 percent of the most faithful and engaged Catholic families manage to pass on the faith to their children. Think about that! Only one in five.

Meanwhile, atheist families and nominally Catholic families have no trouble handing down their worldview to their kids. This is not hard to figure out. The broader culture supports their worldview. Small-o orthodox Christians are up against immense power. Think of the opening lines of David Foster Wallace’s famous Kenyon College commencement address :

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

This is liberalism. If we wish to change the water, so to speak, we have to first learn what water is, why it’s wrong, and how to be in the water, but not of it. You see?

I just gave a talk at the Catholic Medical Association meeting in Dallas. In my speech, I told about the late Vaclav Benda, and how he and his wife Kamila formed their children to hold on to their Catholic faith amid the overwhelming power of communism to dictate reality. The Bendas lived as conscious counterculturalists. One of the six adult Benda children told me that in their Prague childhood, every day when they would come home from school, their father would ask them what they had learned that day, what they had seen and heard in the world. He would listen to them, and talk through it with them. In this way, the father helped their kids to discern what was real and true and what was not.

It was a hard daily work of cultivating the children’s imagination. For her part, Kamila Bendova dedicated herself to reading literature to the children for hours every day. Every day. The Bendas knew that they had no choice: if their children were going to be faithful Catholics, and to stand in whatever way possible against the corrupt communist order, mother and father were going to have to treat their home like a kind of domestic monastery, where they slowly and patiently transmitted a conception of order to the imaginations of their children.

I don’t see any other way to do this, except through small Christian communities — the family first, but then networks of families. Do you? If so, let’s hear it.

Tonight we enter the choking, blinding black cloud of Wrath. There Dante meets Marco the Lombard, and asks him what is to blame for the world today having been consumed by evil and chaos. The moral philosophy Marco espouses is at the heart of the Commedia‘s meaning. I have abandoned the Musa translation for the Hollander one here, because it has more grandeur:

First he heaved a heavy sigh, which grief wrung

to a groan, and then began: “Brother,

the world is blind and indeed you come from it.

“You who are still alive assign each cause

only to the heavens, as though they drew

all things along upon their necessary paths.

“If that were so, free choice would be denied you,

and there would be no justice when one feels

joy for doing good or misery for evil.”

Marco refers to the medieval habit of blaming moral failures on forces outside of man’s control — symbolized by the heavenly spheres (hence the belief in horoscopes). Marco’s point here is the same as Shakespeare’s: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Men believe that they can’t help themselves, that they are playthings in the hands of forces larger than themselves — but that isn’t true. Marco continues:

“Yes, the heavens give motion to your inclinations,

I don’t say all of them, but even if I did,

you still possess a light to winnow good from evil,

“and you have free will. Should it bear the strain

in its first struggles with the heavens,

then, rightly nurtured, it will conquer all.”

In less poetic language, Marco concedes that we all have inclinations toward sin, but we can still see good and evil, and have the power, through free will, to resist our sinful inclinations. If we refuse sin the first time, and keep doing so, there’s nothing within our own natures that we cannot overcome. This is what Purgatory is all about: straightening through ascetic labors the crooked paths within us, making ourselves ready for Heaven. Marco goes on to say that if we submit ourselves, in our freedom, to God (“a greater power”), we free ourselves from the forces of fate and instinct. Here’s the clincher:

“Therefore, if the world around you goes astray,

in you is the cause and in you let it be sought…”

Boom, there it is. If you want a world of peace, order, and virtue, then first conquer your own rebel mind and renegade heart. Quit blaming others for the problems in your life, and take responsibility for yourself, and your own restoration. God is there to help you reach your “better nature,” but because you are free, the decision is in your hands.

But you know Dante: there are always public consequences of private vices. In the next line, Marco turns to political philosophy, explaining that as babies, we are all driven by unformed and undirected desire. If we are not restrained in the beginning, we continue on this path, until we become ever more corrupt. This is why we have the law to educate and train us, and leaders to help us find our way to virtue.

This is the connection, it seems to me, between the Benedict Option and what Vermeule advocates. It’s not an either-or, but a both-and. But as Alan Jacobs says, if we’re going to have Daniels and Esthers, we have to have fathers, mothers, and communities that produce Daniels and Esthers. Notice, though, that Dante (the pilgrim) comes to Marco from a world where the formative institutions have become corrupt. Marco tells Dante that if he wants to undertake the work of reforming the corrupt institutions, he has to start with his own heart, and work outward.

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42 Responses to Making Christian Prophets Within Liberalism

Vermeule is such a jackass, it’s hard to read him without repeatedly laughing out loud. Everything is “conclusive” and “undeniable” and “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Then there’s this, which paraphrases Deneen: “The problem is not whether liberalism is in some abstract sense desirable, for its eventual demise is inevitable.” This is the same thing Marx said about capitalism, and it has about the same level of intellectual credibility.

That said, Vermeule has a point. Deneen is a bit like the followers of Nietzsche who nonetheless cling to legacy Judeo-Christian morality. Vermeule, like Nietzsche himself, goes where the logic leads. In Vermeule’s case, that’s back to a situation where the Uncle Teds of the world have power not only over seminarians, but over all of us, and by force of law.

Thus, I would invert the assertion above: It doesn’t matter whether or not liberalism is a slippery slope to our current nuttiness, because there is no alternative to liberalism that is not much, much worse. That is to say, liberalism, in its basic moral premises, is right. And because it is right, the proper course of action is to try to return it to its proper shape and limits.

Nietzsche may have been correct that Christianity is a slippery slope to liberalism, and hence also to our current nuttiness. But if we believe that Christianity is true, then we’re called to build our civilization on that slope, and never cease shoring up the foundation, adding new props, reminding ourselves of past collapses, and exposing and thwarting those who are busy undermining it all. The same applies to liberalism.

I despised most everything it stood for, whether I became a political hack, or back stabbed my way up the big oil corporate ladder…

Same thing…. a fate worse than death, the death of a soul, and becoming one of them. I never would have made it through there without adapting.

Those who speak of infiltration mean raising an army of double agents, from the youngest age. Programming them to remain invisible until a propitious moment. If they expose themselves sooner, the ceiling will slam shut.

Is it moral to weaponize children? We become the enemy by doing so.

And you will be able to trust these programmed double agents how much, when they see you have raised them to be the antithesis of all you claim to espouse?

To treat people as things to be used, to further an agenda.

The Kingdom is not of this world. It lies within. Those who have it, CAN teach it, and those who do not, cannot.

Communties, such as Benedictines, were not formed but for ONE purpose, and that was NOT to save Western Civilization or Rome or Constantinople.

They existed for ONE purpose only. To provide a place or space where people could objectively have a chance of encountering divine Love, and yielding to it entire.

With NO thought of changing the world, as such a desire is sin itself.

Any change of the world was only the side effect of the creation of a holy people.

Our desire is souls, and souls, alone. The rest simply does not matter, except as a way in which to encounter God..

Cultural war is a losing proposition, Faith and Scripture guarantee it, evidence of the world confirms it.

Flee to holy places, encounter others searching for God, exclude those who are not, and deal with them as little as possible.

Trust God to work things out in the end, knowing we are guaranteed to have it much worse, than better, in this physical world, and that our ONLY concern is our soul ordered to God, so that we may assist others, and without error, in THEIR search.

By all means, proclaim the Gospel, to all you meet. But, impersonal masses and mass media are not ordered to such, and are positively destructive to such. Those lead only to mob rule, and frenzy.

How did only 3000 Bolsheviks conquer Russia in 1917? Were they raised in little Bolshevik Ben-op homes? Stalin was raised Catholic. Lenin declared himself a Marxist at age 19. They were converts, not red-diaper babies.

How did transvestites conquer the upper echelons of Western media elites? They were converts, not baptized transvestites from infancy.

No elite Western liberal organization is going to allow itself to be infiltrated by homeschooled Ben-op weirdos. How many Amish do we have working at the State Department, for example?

If we want to convert Western liberal institutions we need to A) make the Church a place attractive to converts, and B) build a cadre of absolutely loyal shock troops to motivate the uncommitted into acquiescence.

For A) Ben-op is a strength. Ever since Vatican II, and especially under Francis, the Church has been eradicating that which makes it weird or suspect to The World. This has become increasingly impossible as The World trends ever more Satanic. Benedict XVI (and Rod’s Ben-op program) would go in the reverse direction. You have to give people something to convert *to*. A prime example of this phenomenon is the success of Islam in Europe.

For B) Ben-op is both a strength and a weakness. Strength because hard formation in strict truths creates the necessary commitment, loyalty and fortitude. But a weakness because of the tendency in the Ben-op proposition to discourage political involvement.

For all that, Vermule is right in his ambitions. It does not take millions or even hundreds of thousands of true believers to move a nation and culture. It takes a small cadre of people willing to die for their beliefs.

For example, imagine what could happen if Carlo M. Vigano gathered a group of followers to shield him, then sat down in the middle of Vatican plaza on a hunger strike, fasting until Pope Francis resigned or he died. That one man could change the Church of a billion people. Simply by giving his life for the Truth.

Where will these Josephs and Mordecais and Esthers and Daniels come from? People who are deeply grounded in and deeply committed to their faith tradition who are also capable of rising to high levels of influence in government and education don’t exactly grow on trees.

Where did Joseph and Mordecai and Esther and Daniel come from? They had no choice about the society in which they found themselves, but not only remained true to their faith, but impressed their captors with the sheer skill, ability, and results they could achieve, that others, lacking their inner strength, wisdom, and insight, could not match. (OK, Esther mostly had her good looks as a woman, but, she also had brains that guided what she accomplished).

If you need people who are sufficiently skilled in negotiating the liberal order to work effectively within it, but also committed to its transformation, and who can sustain that difficult balance over decades, you have to figure out how to form such people.

This sounds a bit like the conundrum in Robert A. Heinlein’s If This Goes On… The lodges and the agents of the Free United States Army were unable to infiltrate the staff of the Grand Inquistor, because both had highly developed psychometric skills, and the psych profile for one was a total mismatch with the psych profile for the other. Fortunately, that’s not exactly the world we live in.

First, liberalism is not so much an “order” as liberals might delude themselves or conservatives fear. As a socialist with residual sympathies for Lenin, if not for his plan of party organization, I have to grapple with, what is it I like about the constitutional foundation of our republic. It is not, per se, a liberal foundation. It does draw on both the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening, as well as some populist currents that were indigenous to British North America. It even draws on some Native American traditions, particularly those of the Iroquois.

So there is an “order” we can appeal to and make use of which stands apart from liberal values and priorities.

What is required, in the face of a general culture that through its command of every communications medium catechizes so effectively…

But does it? The elites and the chattering classes certainly catechize themselves, but I don’t hear that catechism reflected in the discourse of daily life. There is a lot of unaffiliated political capital waiting to be galvanized.

As Mao said on one of his better days, “Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools compete.”

Two comments. First, I think Jacobs underscores why “worldly” Christians like Neocalvinists (and their ilk) tend to fail: they only focus on reforming institutions, rather than starting with themselves. I know many Neocals who have essentially given up on church (which is why, I think, we end up spats like the ones Rod had with certain well-known Christian theologians and intellectuals when the BenOp was released).

Second, I don’t disagree with the whole “this is water” premise, but there’s another reason why Liberalism reigns: it’s easy. What does it ask you to give up, aside from your money (which, really, just gets more things)? You can essentially live how you wish, within a set of loose norms. Want to own 100 cars? Go for it. Want to have sex with any consenting partners? Have at it. You might have to keep up with the latest social justice trends, but a few virtue signaling tweets or Instagram posts, and you’re good to go.

“Therefore, if the world around you goes astray, / in you is the cause and in you let it be sought…”

Boom, there it is. If you want a world of peace, order, and virtue, then first conquer your own rebel mind and renegade heart. Quit blaming others for the problems in your life, and take responsibility for yourself, and your own restoration. God is there to help you reach your “better nature,” but because you are free, the decision is in your hands.

=======

Or, more succinctly, from the great Russian elder, St. Seraphim of Sarov:

“Acquire the Spirit of peace, and a thousand around you shall be saved.”

Vermeuele, despite his recent conversion to religiosity, appears to have the same enthusiasm for legal positivism as he did a decade or so ago. Back then, he wrote two books with Eric Posner arguing for legally unconstrained presidential prerogative. Now that he has found the faith, he has no fewer qualms about entrusting great power to the executive branch. He argues that believers should infiltrate it or raise up a new “Constantine.” How someone could pursue that line of argument after the disastrous Bush administration, I do not know.

The problem, I think, is that, fundamentally, Vermeuele (and a whole host of similar thinkers, including the ultramontanists) have an stunted conception of how statecraft is soulcraft (to borrow George Will’s famous phrase). They see a superstructure that can be coopted by the “right” kind of people and used to good ends. It is imperialism, end stop.

By contrast, the BenOp and Deneen’s critique of liberalism have a more organic conception of the political. Neither precludes Christians living faithfully under an empire. But Dreher and Deneen’s preference is for a pluralist state, with moral education flowing up rather than down. In a funny way, it is more “liberal” than modern liberalism itself.

Now Vermeuele would argue that every political order is involved in setting norms. That is true, of course, but there is a profound difference between an imperial model and a localist one. One is profoundly aware of Augustine’s warning about the libido dominandi, the lust to dominate, while the other imagines it can be solved through elite education and caesaro-papism.

…you really do have to explain how we small-o orthodox Christians are going to manage a counter-catechesis to secular, materialist liberalism…

Here’s how it will happen. It is called the Internet. It allows everyone to access freely religious information at any time. We are, right now, at the start of the biggest evangelizing movement in the history of the World, and no one even realizes it.

Previously, we had to rely on TV and news media. They were determined to cut off the flow of valid information about religion. They made us look stupid. Plus, the universities did the same thing.

Secularists had a stranglehold on the means of communication. But even as we speak, Muslims in Pakistan are secretly listening to Christian talks on youtube. Screwed up secular kids who sense the instability in their world are listening to a Catholic explain why contraception is wrong and why abortion is wrong. We are on the cusp of a great revival. After all, your book is selling, is it not?

One of the problems with the idea that Christians should seize and hold high offices is that the only plausible way to start to do this and keep it going is nepotism.

And of course, there is already plenty of nepotism at that level of society when you take into account the ivy league racket, certain ethnic groups and the many already-insider individuals and families working strenuously every day to keep you people out. It wouldn’t be impossible but it would take a generation at least to get a foothold.

Also keep in mind that “conservative” groups tend to get infiltrated by the same sort of insider dealing that our society at large has become. That’s one of the reasons they quickly become formerly conservative groups dissenting only in style from bourgeois liberalism.

I think it is absolutely essential to remember that Joseph, Esther, Mordecai, and Daniel were all raised to positions of great influence through the special providence of God. None of them set out from the beginning to gain the positions that God placed them in. No Christian who maintains his faith and integrity will ever rise to the level of Joseph, Daniel, etc. in our secular liberal system because obtaining the necessary promotions requires worship of the reigning idols. So rather than try to work the system to reach the top, Christians should focus on being faithful and wait for God to raise them up, if He chooses to do so.

Note that my previous comment doesn’t mean Christians can’t be in small positions of influence in academia, government, etc. — I am myself in a small position. But I don’t see any way to reach a position of large influence and power while maintaining Christian convictions. And it doesn’t even have to be matters of faith — family and Christian community are just as important. Great men and women generally leave a path of broken relationships behind them because that was the sacrifice that the system required to reach the top.

Daniel, Esther, and the Three Children didn’t get to choose the time and place of their exile, and we haven’t been given a choice about our developing internal exile. We of course need to do what we can to prepare, but I must admit that I’m a bit fatalistic–meaning that most of the real preparation that we and our children do or don’t have is largely unconscious and beyond our ability to shift very much. I suspect that someone looking at people today, Christian or non-Christian, from the remove of 300 years in one direction or another would see far more similarities between us all than differences, just as we do when looking, say, at medieval man.

What I have observed in my late-20-something children as they go about establishing themselves in the world and starting families is that the single most powerful factor guiding them in solid Christian directions appears to have been their experience growing up in an intact, loving family with a father and mother playing traditional roles. Everything else has been important, but secondary to the overwhelming and largely unconscious experience of being able, throughout their entire lives, to make comparisons between their experience and what they have seen around them: comparing whole with broken, sane with insane, ordered with chaotic, certain with unstable…

It is this powerful web of love that is the only force strong enough to endure the “catechesis” of the world. If those bonds of love are strong enough, the attempts of the world to catechize us actually have a repelling effect, strengthening one’s faith.

We never neglected our children’s Orthodox Christian upbringing, but it is important to keep one’s eye on the ball. Any regrets that I have about how we prepared them for the world they live in are less and less about intellectual and religious formation and more about the ways in which I, in my pursuit of wealth and success, failed to nurture that foundation of love.

[NFR: What a beautiful comment. Thank you for it. Christian Smith and others have observed from their research that no factor matters more to religion being transferred to the next generation than having grown up with religiously observant parents, and especially with a religiously observant father. — RD]

“Muslims in Pakistan are secretly listening to Christian talks on youtube. Screwed up secular kids who sense the instability in their world are listening to a Catholic explain why contraception is wrong and why abortion is wrong.”

Muslim men in particular are very receptive to any sort of control over women. It’s a frequent theme in Muslim culture. It’s no mystery why a Catholic explaining why contraception and abortion is wrong would appeal to Muslims in Pakastan. Except for some liberal urban enclaves in Pakastan they already believe it.

“Let me repeat Jacobs’ point: if you don’t think the Benedict Option will work, or is a good idea, I can certainly respect that. But you really do have to explain how we small-o orthodox Christians are going to manage a counter-catechesis to secular, materialist liberalism.”

Besides “secular, materialist liberalism” how will the BO respond to the only possible alternative – fascism?

For the foreseeable future the choices for most nations (excluding boutique operations like Bhutan) will be some variety of social democracy or some variety of fascism i.e. an insurance company with an army or an army run by kleptocrats.

As far as I can tell you assume these BO communities will be swimming in the sweet waters of liberal democracy. Have you considered the other possibility?

Siarlys Jenkins says:

“As Mao said on one of his better days, ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools compete.'”

Not better but perhaps smarter as that was a good way to smoke out unreliable elements. Leninism seems to resolve to Stalinism.

Please forget Mark Musa. Down, sir, put it down. Laurence Binyon had the benefit of the watchful eye of Ezra, and is the subject of the greatest book review ever written, by the same, available in the Literary Essays of

[E]very day when they would come home from school, their father would ask them what they had learned that day, what they had seen and heard in the world. He would listen to them, and talk through it with them. In this way, the father helped their kids to discern what was real and true and what was not.

You know, that’s why I like AmCon and this blog. It’s one of the few “communities” where adults get together to talk about exactly this, because it is becoming so rare in the world.

“What have we seen and heard in the world?”

How many times do we check in to CNN or Fox News or MSNBC or the NY Times or Breitbart or the Washington Post or AM Radio and so on and we are told that someone is winning when they are clearly not winning, failing when they are clearly not failing, guilty when they are clearly not guilty, or innocent when they are clearly not innocent?

I’m grateful that the AmCon writers (some more than others) are willing to set aside partisan interest and ask – is this the truth, or is this not the truth? Is this right, or is this wrong? This website isn’t perfect, but it’s a place where I see a healthy dialogue between the writers and commenters to “discern what was real and true and what was not”.

No, he was Orthodox originally. He even entered a seminary in his youth.

Re: That could happen if Carlo M. Vigano gathered a group of followers to shield him, then sat down in the middle of Vatican plaza on a hunger strike, fasting until Pope Francis resigned or he died.

Forcing a pope to resign renders the resignation dubious.

Re: That one man could change the Church of a billion people. Simply by giving his life for the Truth.

You express an extreme form of clericalism here. The Church is more than the Pope. It is more by a lot than the Pope, or the episcopate as whole. And no, it would not change much if Vigano did something like that– which, as a form of suicide, would be accounted a sin.

“But you know Dante: there are always public consequences of private vices. In the next line, Marco turns to political philosophy, explaining that as babies, we are all driven by unformed and undirected desire. If we are not restrained in the beginning, we continue on this path, until we become ever more corrupt.”

A series of reasonable and logically interconnected observations. But isn’t what is being described, ultimately, the literal algorithmicness (quite literally in fact, since it is so evidenced by infant language acquisition–a fundamental mathematical process instinctive to the infantile brain). So sinning is also, just like language, not simply a discrete act, but, inherent within it, the algorithmic necessity, one might say the empirical purpose, to exist and be as a function or process–inherently an interminable one (its very failng is to be discrete and self-restrictive).

Sin is an algorithm, which is to say it is very much like a language, whose very purpose is expression, repetition, reiteration, etc. Hence, perhaps, the emphasis placed on silence in the more meditative and self-mastering religions, namely those of the East. The mastery of silence over the instinctive algorithm of language is analogously, but also practically, related to the mastery over the inherent replicative algorithmicity of sin. Which pehraps extends not only through physical acts and words, but through thoughts themselves, just as there are internal words and discourses inaudible and thus concealed to others by a particular mind, there are obviously internal sins, those of disguised anger, irate blame, envy, resentment, which are the very much operative algorithms of a concealed and internalized sin, whose effects, in themselves (without further physical addition), may not be limited to the original mind subject to said algorithm.

HaighaThus, I would invert the assertion above: It doesn’t matter whether or not liberalism is a slippery slope to our current nuttiness, because there is no alternative to liberalism that is not much, much worse. That is to say, liberalism, in its basic moral premises, is right. And because it is right, the proper course of action is to try to return it to its proper shape and limits.

Nietzsche may have been correct that Christianity is a slippery slope to liberalism, and hence also to our current nuttiness. But if we believe that Christianity is true, then we’re called to build our civilization on that slope, and never cease shoring up the foundation, adding new props, reminding ourselves of past collapses, and exposing and thwarting those who are busy undermining it all. The same applies to liberalism.

I could not agree more. Despite all of it’s flaws, liberalism works much better than any of the other options we’ve figured out so far. It’s also the only thing that would really allow BenOp style communities to persist.

Old West says:What I have observed in my late-20-something children as they go about establishing themselves in the world and starting families is that the single most powerful factor guiding them in solid Christian directions appears to have been their experience growing up in an intact, loving family with a father and mother playing traditional roles. Everything else has been important, but secondary to the overwhelming and largely unconscious experience of being able, throughout their entire lives, to make comparisons between their experience and what they have seen around them: comparing whole with broken, sane with insane, ordered with chaotic, certain with unstable…

This is essentially the same thing I’ve observed in my own peer groups from elementary school through grad school. The people with troubled relationships almost always came from broken homes or parents with dysfunctional relationships. Those who are obsessed with status and greed seem to be following their parents examples too. It took a while for this pattern to become clear, in their early 20s the correlation wasn’t that great, but by the time everybody reached their mid 30s it seems amazingly high. Kids learn much more from example than anything else, whatever you want passed on to them, you have to make sure you live it yourself.

The Christian interwebz and lecture circuit are bursting with people telling us things are awful.

Agree with it or not (and I’m generally in agreement), one of the very few expositions of a plan is Rod Dreher’s “The Benedict Option.” It’s up to critics of the BenOp to clearly state what their plan is.

Cranking the sound system up to 11 to drown out the sound of the trains isn’t much of a plan. Neither is doubling down on the pursuit of personal peace and material prosperity with a genuflection in the direction of Moral Theraputic Deism on Sundays (when convenient).

In Marx’s defense, the capitalism he was writing about did collapse back in 1929. The mistake was assuming that Communism was the only alternative. Ironically, the progression of affairs is an almost textbook Hegelian dialectic, with Capitalism as the Thesis, Socialism as the Antithesis and, the modern hybrid economies as the Synthesis.

As for Liberalism, one needs to remember that its implementation has been piecemeal and full-on Liberalism (pure application of the ideology) only really came into existence after the Cold War. So you can’t exactly accuse it of longevity. By full-on Liberalism, I mean the socio-political-economic system based in a moral framework which holds that the satisfaction of personal desire is the greatest good and is constructed with an aim towards enabling the pursuit of that good.

I haven’t read the other comments so forgive me if I happen to parrot anyone.

I appreciate Vermeule and find him a very insightful thinker. Some have pointed out that the BenOp and Vermeule’s – let’s call it the Daniel Project – are not mutually exclusive. Rod, you’ve had some run-ins with Vermeule but you’ve also repeatedly emphasized that the BenOp isn’t an all or nothing strategy but actually contemplates engaging the outside world and supporting church institutions. I don’t think Vermeule has ever really addressed the mutual cohesion that Benedict can give to the Daniel in a modernist world. I also think he pretty much ignores that Catholicism and Orthodoxy have always looked to monasticism as a pillar for the church. Perhaps a post-Vatican I church has lost a bit of appreciation for the ministry of monks in the life of the church as a whole but that’s neither here or there.

In any case, I’ve always thought that the biggest weakness of the Daniel Project was that liberalism doesn’t really allow Daniel to get to such a preeminent place of authority that would require success of the kind Vermeule contemplates. Absent a massive cultural change that would no longer view Daniel as a threat he couldn’t hope to rise in the bureaucracy above mid-manager. (But we wouldn’t really need Daniel if we had that cultural change.) And even then all his decisions would be subject to veto by his superiors. In short, it’s silly to think that liberal institutions would willingly allow persons hostile to it to advance to such a position that they could actively undermine it with any success. It’s already hard enough for run of the mill conservatives. But actual Gelasian Dyarchists? Come on.

While I think Vermeule is correct (and Deneen, for that matter) that liberalism cannot sustain itself and at the same time remain true to its neutral pretenses, Alan Jacobs is correct in his criticism.

As a last thought, it occurs to me that Vermeule’s life work is on issues of sovereignty, authority, procedure, and institutions while the BenOp is pastoral, community and lay-oriented. A main feature of your argument is that the institutional church is no longer sufficient. Perhaps the reason for antagonism between the BenOp and the Daniel Project is that the two sides are just talking past each other. Or at least one side is, anyways.

Boom, there it is. If you want a world of peace, order, and virtue, then first conquer your own rebel mind and renegade heart. Quit blaming others for the problems in your life, and take responsibility for yourself, and your own restoration. God is there to help you reach your “better nature,” but because you are free, the decision is in your hands.

This is more or less exactly what Jordan Peterson writes in 12 Rules, and what he preaches (hence, “clean your room”). Maybe he cribbed it from Dante. Or, for that matter, from your book Rod. Maybe you should take a page out of his book and go on tour.

I say that in jest, but actually it’s not a completely awful idea. If the Jordan Peterson phenomenon demonstrates anything, it shows just how much of a hunger there is out there for something better and more purposeful than what our culture offers us in the form of late stage liberalism.

Everything is “conclusive” and “undeniable” and “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

I must agree that any prose which is freely laced with that sort of hubris betrays the thinking of a jackass, although we may hope it is just bad writing, and not characteristic of a person’s inner most being.

The Church is more than the Pope. It is more by a lot than the Pope, or the episcopate as whole.

True. But does the Roman Catholic denomination recognize this?

Not better but perhaps smarter as that was a good way to smoke out unreliable elements.

But I enjoy the hundred flowers for their own sake. Its one reason I wasn’t a Maoist, even in the early 1970s when little red books were popular.

Why would anyone want a world of peace, order and virtue in the first place. Sounds boring as Hell.

Or West Allis.

How did only 3000 Bolsheviks conquer Russia in 1917?

They had vast popular support. A good part of the army preferred the orders of Bolshevik commissars to those of the officers appointed by the Czar. Peasants thought “bread, land, peace” was a good idea. The Red Guards of that era were blue collar “white working class,” not middle class college students (there being rather little of a middle class to begin with).

In what proportion does Christianity require the cradle, the convert and the culture? I wonder a lot about this equation as it relates to our faith’s “Crisis of Transmission,” to borrow the words of James Houston.

Surely the cradle Christian and the Convert Christian need what each offers. I n out case, I wish my cradle Christian kids — in addition to the good example of their father’s faith as well the faith (and intact marriages) of all of their aunts and uncles — had the benefit of seeing the excitement and gratitude of a recent convert. It makes the whole belief system so much more real.

As to the culture, I guess we will all see soon enough just how many of us were only faithful because it did not require sacrifice or the risk of it. But looking at China, for example, clearly the faith spreads when persecuted.

This whole idea takes me back to the 1990s, to the days of the stealth candidate movement, when there were religious conservatives who really thought that they could run for local government offices and church offices as mainstream or moderate conservatives, then once they were elected, impose their true agenda and take their polities back to traditional values. It didn’t work because Americans who are not traditionalist conservatives really don’t have all that much respect for authority. We aren’t the sheep they think we are and we’re not going to let some official busybody tell us what values to hold and how to live our lives. Professor Vermeule, if Jacobs represents his position accurately, is fooling himself.

Mostly, established orders collapse when their own contradictions grow too great, and their sustaining credibility is lost. At that point, the outsiders who have not been allowed to take part can become influential, if they are prepared. Their allies will be those inside who just went along to get along and are not ideologically committed and will follow whoever credibly gains leadership as the old order passes.

Muslim men in particular are very receptive to any sort of control over women. It’s a frequent theme in Muslim culture. It’s no mystery why a Catholic explaining why contraception and abortion is wrong would appeal to Muslims in Pakastan. Except for some liberal urban enclaves in Pakastan they already believe it.

‘But if we believe that Christianity is true, then we’re called to build our civilization on that slope, and never cease shoring up the foundation, adding new props, reminding ourselves of past collapses, and exposing and thwarting those who are busy undermining it all. The same applies to liberalism.’

Absolutely! As I like to say: the existence of slippery slopes does not mean we can ignore the possibility that the truth lies half way up the mountain.

Let’s just say that Charles Cosimano pontificates from a neighborhood of peace, order and virtue. He’s saying these things as a comedy act. He’s funnier than Father Guido Sarducci. If anyone actually tried to organize a Church of St. Arthur the Atrocious, nobody would laugh harder than Cosimano that they took the bait.

The key problem is counter liberalism comes with a history that counter liberals cannot escape, especially when the discourse blurs to post modernism. Young immature people will gravitate to that naturally. Those existing counter currents are often fascistic (in the literal, historical sense of the term). To have the moral training to reject that without embracing liberalism itself (or some left wing anti liberalism) requires formation and maturity – you can not really expect that of young adults.

Second people will naturally need allies. There aren’t a bunch of Christian humanists running around. A Catholic parish is most likely to be toxic to formation. So the natural allies will be immersed in right wing anti liberal modernisms/post modernisms – a long the lines of the intellectual elements of the alt right. Which is why the very people we want to form around (actually) catholic Christianity will invariably have a density of rather dangerous thinkers that emerge, no matter what. We are trapped by history.

The key problem is counter liberalism comes with a history that counter liberals cannot escape, especially when the discourse blurs to post modernism. Young immature people will gravitate to that naturally. Those existing counter currents are often fascistic (in the literal, historical sense of the term).

If you want to counter liberalism, and don’t want to drift into fascism, there is always the Red Flag. I keep telling you, only socialism can save traditional religion. Not justify it, but leave it space to exist, without selling its soul.